Posted
by
BeauHDon Wednesday May 17, 2017 @07:01PM
from the get-the-ball-rolling dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill: The Justice Department has appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate Russia's involvement in the U.S. election. Mueller, a former prosecutor who served a 12-year term at the helm of the bureau, has accepted the position, according to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. "In my capacity as acting attorney general I determined that it is in the public interest for me to exercise my authority and appoint a special counsel to assume responsibility for the matter," Rosenstein said in a statement. "My decision is not a finding that crimes have been committed or that any prosecution is warranted. I have made no such determination. What I have determined is that based upon the unique circumstances, the public interest requires me to place this investigation under the authority of a person who exercises a degree of independence from the normal chain of command."UPDATE: President Trump has released a statement: "As I have stated many times, a thorough investigation will confirm what we already know -- there was no collusion between my campaign and any foreign entity. I look forward to this matter concluding quickly. In the meantime, I will never stop fighting for the people and the issues that matter most to the future of our country."

I support net neutrality, but I don't think it's a speech issue, rather it's more an issue of economics. At least, we haven't seen any evidence of somebody's speech being squelched as a result of a lack of net neutrality.

Political correctness on the other hand does very often squelch somebody's speech, and in fact we see it happen at US universities often.

It's not directly a free speech issue. But remember, it's not just making fast lanes for paying web sites/services - it's about severely throttling to stopping access to sites/services that don't align with the ISP. For example they could stop access to the FCC feedback section, slashdot, or stop access to Reddit. Again it's not just about making paid fast lanes, it's also about making access very very slow to impossible to things the ISP dosent like. You think ISP will stop the abuse of the system when they get an upper hand?

Net Neutrality is totally a free speech issue. If Internet content starts getting different treatment by owner what you can read and, most importantly, what you can say becomes a function of how much money you have.

Net neutrality is vitally important, and it is beyond just free speech and economics. It's about something stronger than laws or economics. It's about nudging the trajectory of our culture.

Nothing stays as it is. Everything evolves. How and in what direction it evolves can be manipulated.

Consider-- in the 1950s it was illegal for movie production companies to own more than a few theaters and only in a limited number of markets. Why? Because in the 1930s and 40s movie theaters were the main source of news an

Most real world issues are subtle, nuanced and lack mainstream interest. Reducing arguments to simple black and white soundbites might "win the votes" of casual spectators, but reality is still there, and doesn't care a jot about any of that.

This is precisely why the US so desperately needs a real third party. It reduces but sadly does not eliminate, the tendency to make every binary decision into a political position, and every political issue into a binary decision.

As long as most elections in the US are single-member first-past-the-post contests, third parties are a non-starter. You can't express yourself by voting for a third party, because if you do, a megalomaniac real estate development and TV host might become president.

What the hell are you talking about? Name one thing that couldn't be said or written while net neutrality is active? Companies may not be allowed to implement a business plan that amounts to "shove a large rod up our customers' rear ends" under net neutrality, but they could still write it if they wanted with or without net neutrality.

Maybe you should try again with the 2nd or maybe the 18th amendment? I mean you're not even bothering to justify that claim never mind doing so in any sort of logical sense, so why not insist that net neutrality is inhibiting the sale of alcohol? It makes just as much sense.

What the hell are you talking about? Name one thing that couldn't be said or written while net neutrality is active? Companies may not be allowed to implement a business plan that amounts to "shove a large rod up our customers' rear ends" under net neutrality, but they could still write it if they wanted with or without net neutrality.

Maybe you should try again with the 2nd or maybe the 18th amendment? I mean you're not even bothering to justify that claim never mind doing so in any sort of logical sense, so why not insist that net neutrality is inhibiting the sale of alcohol? It makes just as much sense.

ISP could make access slashdot extremely slow to impossible to access if they didn't like its content without neutrality. Same goes for the FCC comment section on net nutrality. They could fastlane Britbart and FoxNews and basically cripple access to liberal sites. Or, perhaps more to your horror, they could do the reverse. Net neutrality stops free speech by curtailing access to a tiny rotting pipe if the ISP so chooses.

In the United States most of the areas that have access to high-speed internet have one choice, sometimes two, for internet service. So if you have no alternatives, the company that provides your internet service could choose to reduce access to sites that don't cater to the regulatory environment that they prefer, or they can use poor access to their customers as a method of extorting money from content providers, or use it to privilege competing services that they own. The last two aren't hypothetical, American ISPs have already done both.

But it isn't a natural monopoly or duopoly. The entity choosing which one or two companies provide Internet service is the local government. They're the ones creating the monopoly (or duopoly). If there's no net neutrality and an ISP is found to be throttling websites based on their political affiliation, the local government could potentially revoke their charter and award the service contract to a different ISP.

You see, there are two ways around the problem of neutral access. The government regulat

So then you're suggesting that net neutrality does block free speech by.. ensuring that the ISPs are forced to allow everyone to post and read online equally?

Not to mention the ISPs aren't themselves government entities and the first amendment doesn't apply to them. Net neutrality (or the lack thereof) doesn't instruct the ISPs to block or allow any particular speech. If they decide to block something, that's on them and there's nothing the unconstitutional about that because they aren't the government.

My guess is it goes something like this. Trump absolutely colluded with Russia, but never in a formal way. He noticed, or more likely someone on his staff noticed that Hillary had made an enemy, and that Putin if given the opportunity might help him out. So he opportunistically developed pro Russian positions and titled towards their side, in the hope of getting some help. The one time he publicly asked for help arguably titled that to formal collusion, but that is for a jury to decide. Now there is a lot of crap going on, so it may be that they can prove formal collusion for at least one or more of his advisors. There has got to be some reason that Trump is bending himself in pretzels to defend Flyn (sp?). It is even possible that Trump himself did so, though I doubt he intentionally broke laws. He shows too great a track record of staying just inside the lines, or close enough not to get in trouble anyway. Personally, I still find him guilty of treason, since he as a leading politician welcomed and praised a foreign attack from a state enemy on the integrity of our political process. Unfortunately that is not the definition the constitution uses....

As far as actual crimes, obstruction of justice is where it is at..1. Firing Comey.2. Suggesting that Comey should be loyal to him and not the law.3. Suggesting that Comey end the Flynn investigation.4. Trying to halt the investigation by basically calling everyone liars, and that every voice that doesn't support trump is fake news.5. Supporting the above by promoting actual fake news.6. Threatening comey over twitter

Other disturbing actions that attack directly the separations of powers and our government at its core.1. Suggesting that judges that are just doing their jobs are endangering us all, and likely putting targets on them all.2. Threatening to primary any lawmaker that doesn't support his agenda.3. Just lying about everything. Seriously it weakens the office of the president and our ability as a country to get anything done.4. Never forget the Obama birth certificate crap. That was trying to destroy Obama, presumably to gain political advantage. As a side effect he weakened the ability of that government to get things done. Had their been truth to it, it would be fine, but the purpose was not truth. The purpose was basically A1 grade evil.5. Just blatant fact free appeals to emotion. It was, well very sad.6. Giving away Top Secret code word based intelligence to Putin as some sort of twisted ego trip. Seriously, this guy was the guy bitching about emails for ages. Can you see Hillary posing in those photos? You may not be able to prosecute _him_ for it, but anyone else, other than the vice president would be seeing 10 years jail time. He may have the power to do it, but it was stupid beyond all measures of stupidity. It's like he was put on Earth to make Sarah Palin look smart.

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(as is obvious to anyone with a brain, who has looked in vain for actual verifiable evidence for any of that), at around middle of 2018, just in time for midterms, it would indeed be so much "winning".trump's opponents are overplaying their hand on this. they should focus on opposing him on his polices that hurt voters, on his breaking election promises, and in promoting policy alternatives that benefit voters(all of them, instead of playing identity politics).crying "russians!", "impeachment!" , "resistance!",etc, etc, while supporting illegal immigrants, open trade and borders, support for more wars in support of "allies", politically correct suppression of free speech, etc etc. will not help.

Anyone who thinks the most incriminating stuff is out there isn't paying attention. He didn't fire Comey because everything was already on the table. He didn't clamp down on white house visitor logs or continue to obscure his tax filings because he has nothing more to hide. There's another shoe that's going to drop.

Trump's combination of paranoia, criminal involvement, and complete inability to keep his mouth shut is fucking amazing. There's no way this administration doesn't go down in flames. Whether it takes the GOP with it for the foreseeable future is another story, we'll just have to wait and see.

I'm not sure how any of your "obstruction of justice" claims actually add up to obstruction of justice.

1) Trump has the legal authority to fire the head of the FBI, the office serves at the pleasure of the President. It's hard to see exercising the legal rights of the President could be construed as obstruction of justice without creative interpretation of the vaguer elements of the obstruction statutes.

2-6) These basically add up to advocating for your own case, something that everyone with money and law

when mueller finds there is no crime or collusion (as is obvious to anyone with a brain, who has looked in vain for actual verifiable evidence for any of that),

Really? So Trump ADMITTING on camera that he fired the FBI director to stop the investigation into his possible collusion with Russia isn't "evidence"?

Trump explained openly how he committed obstruction of justice. We all heard it. How is that not evidence of wrongdoing? If that was you or me we'd already be in handcuffs, and you fucking know it. Your blind partisanship is mind boggling and disgusting in the extreme.

Trump could rape and murder a 5 year-old boy on live TV and people like you would argue that "the kid had it coming".

And in fact when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said 'you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, it's an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won.

I don't think it's a smoking gun. But it's still a bizarrely stupid thing to say when everyone is pretty convinced you fired someone for investigating you.

You're mistaking "People don't want to talk to you when you reveal yourself to be an ignorant asshole" with suppression of free speech.

When the government says you can't as a white dude use the N word in public, then we can discuss whether or not we're on a slippery slope to politically correct suppression of free speech. Otherwise, you're just whining about having to face consequences, which freedom of speech does not protect you from. You can say any hateful ignorant thing you want, and people do, and

Nope, sorry, Bartles, but what argued was that they don't have to prove anything about the order, Trump's own words moved the burden onto him to prove he wasn't trying to do what he said he wanted to do, which would make his intentions illegal, forever tainting his actions.

The rule that applies to Trump is that you get judged by your words and your deeds. Any number of lawyers and political consultants could have spotted the problem. Yet he kept proclaiming he was going to do it, and thus the courts will take him at his word.

Perhaps you misunderstand.
The order is on trial. Trump's order. Trump has demonstrated intent, and that intent is admissible as evidence.
Sorry that's so difficult for you to understand. Hope it clears up some of your confusion.

If I start declared "John Smith should die", "Someone should really kill John Smith", and "I'd love to just kill John Smith" and then I'm found with a hammer in my hand over John Smith's lifeless body, it would be perfectly reasonable to admit my statements as evidence of intent. Likewise, Trump's repeated statements that he wanted to enact a "Muslim Ban" are being used as statements of intent. It shows how he intended the immigration ban to function and is perfectly reasonable to admit as evidence.

It's literally the first thing that's recited to you when you're read your Miranda Rights: "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law." Trump said things and they are being used against him. This isn't "liberal vs. conservative." This is just how the law works.

The problem for them is that they go to court to argue that it's not a Muslim ban, and the other side plays a supercut video of Trump and his advisers saying it/is/ is a Muslim ban, and then follow up with a pile of tweets and memos saying it's a Muslim ban.

Please explain, with relevant citations, how any of the Bill of Rights applies to the Executive's authority over immigration restrictions.

First of all, the Executive doesn't make laws. That's the job of the Legislative branch. The Executive has the discretion on how laws may be enforced, but that's not the same thing as being able to enact laws. Most of Trump's work to date has been in changing the Executive's policies and the change on immigration enforcement is one such. I know it can be hard to realize it, since Trump has a CEO mindset that makes him expect that he can just issue orders and the Congress and the Courts should do what he says or be fired, but that's not how the US Government was designed and implemented.

Secondly, the US was founded notably by a number of groups of people who fled to the Americas because they were unable to practice their chosen religion in the way that they wanted. The Pilgrims and the Quakers are the most famous, perhaps, but French Huguenots and other lesser-known groups also established colonies as well. Since a lot of the discrimination that they had faced in the old world had been governmentally-sanctioned - the Protestant/Catholic see-saw in England, persecution of the Anabaptists and Albigenses, etc., etc., etc.

However, no single breakaway group established dominance in the colonies, and to minimise the risk that some group, sect, or denomination might do so, the establishment of Freedom of Religion was made part of the very bedrock layer of the US principles of government and has been vigorously defended ever since, even as it allowed a lot of groups that many would dearly love to see suppressed, from the Mormons and the Jehovah's Witnesses to Scientologists and beyond. Realize that, in fact some of these groups are illegal in other countries, but if you claim to be a religion in the USA you have to do seriously criminal things before the government will get involved.

The official government position on religion has always been carefully silent on what is a "true" religion. While many in this country assert that any "religion" that doesn't worship Jesus is false (and let's not get into nuances like how to baptize or doctrinal differences), the Jewish faith got a free pass, and actually, the USA recognized Islam from Tripoli on, even if mostly as something that existed outside its own borders.

So any form of discrimination against a religion in the USA is anathema to both US philosophy and law, no matter how weird or repugnant individuals might find that religion. Take away our guns (which some might argue amounts to a religion in itself), and you might more or less survive, but start running religious tests and you haven't merely touched the Third Rail, you've tapped into the whole power station.

I'd agree with everything you wrote, but would also add that the colonists saw what mixing government and religion does. The King ran the Church of England which was the official religion of England. If you didn't belong to the Church of England, you were effectively a second-class citizen. Meanwhile, the King could change the rules of the religion to suit his whims. If he decided that the whole "Lent" thing was a bother, he could do away with it. If he decided that he wanted to become vegetarian, the religion could outlaw all meat. (Obviously, these are exaggerations to make a point and didn't happen in history that I know of.)

The people who want to remove the "Church-State Separation" keep thinking that this will mean that the Church (by which, they mean THEIR church and not that horrible church down the road that does everything wrong) will influence what the government does. If you remove the separation, though, the influence will flow both ways. I wonder how many of these Church-State Separation opponents would want government officials forming a committee to decide how Baptism should be performed or which prayers should be included in the service.

They broke the story about Jessie Jackson's love child. They ended John Edwards' political career by breaking the story of his affair with a campaign staffer. They broke the story about Tiger Woods' affairs, too. They were also the first to report on the divorces of both Mel Gibson and Billy Joel.

If they published a document purporting to be Trump's tax return, I wouldn't trust them. If they reported on what was said at a political meeting, I wouldn't believe them. But if they reported that Trump had a love

We didn't know the extent of the Nixon atrocities until more than a year after the break in. It's quite likely lots of evidence exists, but is being used in an ongoing investigation and will not be disclosed publically anytime soon. If trump asked Comey to back of Flynn, and we know he admitted to firing Comey over Russia issues, that is likely enough on its own. Not to mention the overwhelming list that grows by the day. If we see Paul Ryan buckle, it's all over.

Your first link says its a conspiracy theory.Your second link says that no wrongdoing was found.Your third link says that Holder didn't know about the operation, much less Obama.The very headline of your fourth link states that the weapons airdrop to the Kurds accidentally hit the wrong place, and they had to destroy them to stop Daesh from getting them.

Do we even need to go on, with a person who thinks that Obama bears personal responsibility (or even deliberately ordered) an airdrop's landing in the wrong place in order to support terrorists, while he's busy deliberately trying to fuel Mexican crime, personally running IRS persecution campaigns which the FBI says didn't actually exist, and ordering hits on Democratic staffers?

Given the fact that Flynn and Manafort are officially named as subjects of a criminal investigation [nbcnews.com] into illegal foreign influence and grand jury subpoenas have been issued for their records?

False, based on all evidence save Trump's Twitter feed. No physical evidence has been produced - and you'd think there would be tons of evidence, since the whole purpose of spying is to gather information. The claims have been directly contradicted by members of the intelligence community. Barring a sudden release of proof, I can safely label this as a lie.

got Comey to drop charges against Hillary

False. She was never charged, and Obama did not influence Comey's decision to end the investigation with no charges. As proof, I point out that, once the Republicans took office, Comey would have been able to re-open the investigation and file charges with political support. He made no attempts to do so. Instead, he got fired, *supposedly* for his excessive pursuit of Clinton - in other words, Trump, the biggest Hillary-hater of them all, is claiming Comey was too tough on her.

Bill Clinton talked to Lynch days before FBI decided to drop charges

Non sequitur. I also ate a sandwich days before the FBI dropped the investigation.

Seth Rich was shot in DC and he was the one that gave the emails to Wikileaks not Russia.

Only the first six words of that are true. If you dig into that story, you find circles - Fox News claiming a private investigator uncovered evidence of a Wikileaks connection, and then when CNN calls that PI, he claims he never found evidence of it, but heard of the possibility of evidence from a Fox News report. It's literally made up - in other words, lies.

I don't believe there is any "Deep State" but if there is any this is evidence that it is composed primarily of people who care more about the rule of law than partisan politics. I for one welcome our globalist overlords.

He was chosen as G.W.B.'s attorney general on 09/04/2001, so he has a hot week in office before the WTC fell.

Director Mueller, along with Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey, threatened to resign from office in March 2004 if the White House overruled a Department of Justice finding that domestic wiretapping without a court warrant was unconstitutional.

Obama kept him on for two years after he was elected, and Comey was not only his assistant, but his successor.

The funniest thing about this is that Comey is old school FBI. The FBI trains their people to document every single conversation. They can't have a conversation in an active investigation without that conversation being documented in writing or they've broken department policy.

Comey was known around Washington for going even further, he was known to document conversations that weren't even related to investigations. Some of the accounts I've seen says that everyone that had been around Washington for more t

That new US Prez sitcom is better than anything I've ever watched. At first I was skeptical because it looked like a cheap Spin City knockoff or a weak rehash of That's my Bush, and, well, basically it is, but they really manage to spice it up and get to new heights week after week.

Though I have to admit, it slowly starts to get a wee bit unrealistic.

After spending hours each day studying the Trump nightmare, I now wonder if a real criminal conviction will put Trump in prison. It is hard to look into anything Trump has touched and not find serious criminal activity. The obstruction of justice charge alone is sufficient to demand a prison sentence as are his numerous violations of the Foreign Powers Corruption Act. But we all pretty much know that after being tossed out of office and fined there will be no prison time as the sick truth is that we never have equal justice for all. At this point numerous Trump properties have been placed in the names of family members. I suggest that all Trump's assets, including those transferred be seized and frozen so that the numerous crimes and injuries can be taken from those funds. Besides, if he spends the rest of his life in prison he won't need money anyway.

Not while he is President - kind of a flaw in the system at the moment.

So all those weirdos who pretend to be colonials at political events rejoice - you've got yourself a King who is above the law - so that's a worse situation than the King that George Washington fought against. So long as enough Senators are on his side he's untouchable.

"Mueller’s authority under Rosenstein’s appointment is broad. Mueller is empowered to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump,” as well as “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.” He may also prosecute federal crimes uncovered in this investigation."

Per Order No. 3915-2017 (pdf) [justice.gov], Mueller has been authorized to prosecute federal crimes, and given a fairly broad scope of investigation - any links between the Trump campaign and the Russians, and any matters arising from these investigations (such as obstruction of justice).

Forget power to investigate, this guy has powers to prosecute. He's going out loaded for bear.

No, I'm pretty sure that Trump can't pardon himself, and he's just about the only person that he can't pardon. He would have to step down from the Presidency to be pardoned, and then he's have to trust Pence (presumably his successor) to pardon him after he steps down. I think Trump is highly unlikely to step down, unless it really, really looks like he's going to do hard time.

Even up until this afternoon I was certain the Republicans would wait until the fall or early next year, due to wanting to take the pulse of the voters, and in particular the base and any tight House races (there are only a handful of tight Senate races, or so I understand). But I think matters are quickly accelerating beyond any ability of the Republicans to control. While Trump's popularity with the base still seems fairly strong, he's shedding support elsewhere, and I suspect, unless things can quiet down for a bit, the base will begin to erode as well, and at that point, then so will loyalty for Trump among lawmakers.

This was inevitable, if for no other reason than Trump just cannot keep his mouth shut. He's like Richard Nixon's idiot brother, all of the same paranoia and deceit, but with half the brains. How can his defenders keep up his defense, when they'll deny the report or rumor against him in the morning, and then he'll fucking confirm the truth of the report that night? At some point, and I expect that point is coming soon, he's just simply going to start shedding supporters, simply because they don't want to be tied to the anchor when it's finally pitched overboard.

I waffle between Trump either being one of the stupidest human beings to ever get elected to high office, or him really not wanting to be there but too arrogant to just walk away, and wanting to be pushed so he can claim he was the subject of persecution. Certainly that's the way it's going if today's Coast Guard commencement is any indication.

Have you been watching Fox News? They have been commiting slander, libel and other things against the dnc staffer yet haven't said a peep against the fact that trump is leaking secrets to Russia. Fox and republicans don't care that trump is commiting treason. They are such hypocrites that if Hillary did half of what trump has done they would be hanging her.

But if one of their own does it ? It isn't a big deal. Republicans. Hypocrites to the core. Do as they say not as do.

If we are talking about hypocrisy -- whoever leaked the story to WaPo out of "concern" about the danger to the sources certainly knew that it's much more likely ISIS would find out what happened by reading the story about the secrets on the front page of WaPo.

Really? Worse? Really? She'd have allowed the massive amounts of pollution that the Liar-in-Chief already has via executive orders? She would've embarrassed all of us with brains? You're out of your fucking mind or dumb as a brick if you really think this.

Whatever the Democrats may be screaming, it's irrelevant to this. The Republicans control Congress. It's in their hands, and thus far every attempt they've made to support Trump has been thrown back in their face by his inability to keep his mouth shut. For chrissakes, the man is such an arrogant blowhard he was showing off to the fucking Russians in the Oval Office with a Russian journalist in the room. Whether he let slip any classified data or not, the fact is not only has he once again, within the space of a few days, made himself look like a big mouthed ass, he's now pissing off Israel, which means Israel and other allies, not to mention the State Department itself, are going to start holding crucial intelligence closer to their chests lest the Braggart-in-chief decide to show off to any other foreign powers.

Don't you see that it is Trump himself that is going to be forcing Republican lawmakers' hands? The opposing minority party always makes frequent demands for removals and impeachments and judicial proceedings. Christ, that's been the way Washington has worked since the day after George Washington walked off into the sunset. The difference here is that this is a man who seems bound and determined to make his supporters and allies look like idiots, and seems to want to hand his opponents, both Democrat AND Republican (because he has no lack of critics in the GOP) all the ammunition they could ever need.

At this point you even have some Democratic strategists hoping he doesn't get impeached and removed, because the longer he's in the White House, the worse the Republicans look.

Whatever the Democrats may be screaming, it's irrelevant to this. The Republicans control Congress. It's in their hands, and thus far every attempt they've made to support Trump has been thrown back in their face by his inability to keep his mouth shut. For chrissakes, the man is such an arrogant blowhard he was showing off to the fucking Russians in the Oval Office with a Russian journalist in the room. Whether he let slip any classified data or not, the fact is not only has he once again, within the space of a few days, made himself look like a big mouthed ass, he's now pissing off Israel, which means Israel and other allies, not to mention the State Department itself, are going to start holding crucial intelligence closer to their chests lest the Braggart-in-chief decide to show off to any other foreign powers.

My favorite part is Putin has a transcript [gizmodo.com] of the entire meeting he wants to use to help clear trump. Obviously at least one of the visitors had a recording device going at all times.

Irrelevant. The E.C. is a good thing IMO. She lost a majority of popular votes in a majority of states. There is no such thing as a national vote.

That indicates a problem with the system

No it doesn't'. The point of the E.C. is to ensure the Executive has the interest of a majority of states. We are a union of states not a mob. The same idea for the Senate (equal representation of the states to give smaller states power) is the idea for the E.C. There is nothing wrong with balancing the interest and needs of different states. The constitution was ratified with the distinction of rural and urban states and compromised to each of their needs in the form of a bicameral congress (with both equal and proportional representation) and the E.C.

Just because Clinton won huge majorities in a few large states does not mean she should dictate to the other states. We are a union of states not a mob.

I keep seeing people bring up the 3/5ths compromise as if trying to make a point but it is obvious they haven't read the history and only see snippets that they don't like and their blind rage make moral judgments.

You do understand that the compromise was to limit the southern slave owning states power in the House and E.C., right? Believe if or not slavery was a contentious issue, even in 1787 and there were many people that sympathized with the slaves and wanted its abolishment. Hell, the British by 1783

Having those bastards at each other's throats is about the best we can do. Perhaps hand them all antipersonnel grenades, knowing their feeble old arms can't throw it far enough to be outside the kill radius...

Let me give you some advice the next time you want to criticize Wikipedia. Go click on that link above to the Wiki article. Now, look at the text, notice how it has various numbers in brackets in superscript. You can hover over them and some text will pop up. That's called a "reference". Those "references" are where the claims in the article come from. If you click on one of those, or scroll allllll the way down to the bottom, you'll see the list of references for the article, all 283 of them. Those are what you need to attack the credibility of, because the Wikipedia article itself is really just a collection of claims given in those references. Just go ahead and start at #1 and work your way down, debunking each of those references. Make sure not to skip #4, which quotes a report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and National Intelligence Council:

We assess with high confidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election, the consistent goals of which were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.

Make sure not to skip this one, either. [marketwatch.com] You wouldn't want it to seem like you're cherry-picking.

No, it's not, I've read that report several times. It doesn't give any convincing evidence to support its conclusions.
If you disagree, please point me to the paragraph or section you find most convincing.

I would agree it was just Democrats shouting in the dark... if there didn't keep being problems. See here's the thing: The issue isn't with the e-mail leaks. That's not what is being talked about, it is if any of Trump's associates had illegal ties to the Russians and more importantly if Trump tried to cover it up.

Trump was told that Flynn was likely compromised and he shouldn't hire him. Had he not, well that story would end there. But he did hire him. He then pressured the FBI director to drop the investigation in to Flynn, and only fired Flynn when it leaked that he had this conflict of interest. He then implied the problem, and the reason he fired Flynn, was the leak not the compromise. Then he later fired the FBI director which his people claimed was related to the e-mails but he came out and said was because of the Russia investigation.

Guess what? That shit starts to look a lot like obstruction of justice. That's why this thing continues to have legs.

Oh an impeachment of a president? That's not "corrupt politicians" "overthrow[ing] of an elected President," it is constitutional, and is what is supposed to happen if the president breaks the law. Article one section 1 states that "The House of Representatives shall choose their speaker and other officers; and shall have the sole power of impeachment." Article two section four states "The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors."

So ya, if it turns out he obstructed justice, which you'd need an investigation to determine (and that is what is going on), accepted bribes, or other illegal acts then the House would be within its constitutional power to impeach him and the Senate to try him. That's not some covert scheme to subvert the Constitution, it is written right in the original text.

I'd also like to say that the CIA has directly and explicitly stated that they have high confidence that Russia had both intent and success with interfering in the election. Here is the excerpt:"Russian efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election represent the most recent expressionof Moscow’s longstanding desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order, but theseactivities demonstrated a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effortcompared to previou

We assess with high confidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election, the consistent goals of which were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.

So you will ignore what the CIA says quite explicitly in their report:"Russian efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election represent the most recent expressionof Moscow’s longstanding desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order, but theseactivities demonstrated a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effortcompared to previous operations.We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the USpresidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process,denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assessPutin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. Wehave high confidence in these judgments."From https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdfIf you are willing to put your head in the sand and ignore this by coming up with excuses like "it is being controlled by the liberals" or something of the same manner then you are unfit to argue politics.

At least one significant member of Trump's administration had to resign almost as soon as he was appointed because he was found to be working with the Russians, and he's being investigated. I'm not sure where you're getting it from that anyone independent at all in a position to know has suggested there's no links between the Trump campaign and Russia - if that were known, there wouldn't have been multiple FBI investigations to begin with.

And if there weren't multiple FBI investigations into Trump's team's connections with Russia, Comey would still have a job.

Right! "Working with the Russians." Which isn't even vaguely related to "colluding with Russians to manipulate the election." I know, the truth isn't nearly as fun because it forces you to think about why the Democrats ACTUALLY lost so many legislative seats and governorships along with both houses of congress and the White House. But your instinct to deliberately mis-represent the very thing you're citing as some sort of evidence tells us all we need to know about what your real agenda is: deflection and distraction. OK, at least it's consistent with the way the Ds ran their entire election season into the ground and shows you still haven't grappled with the fact that continuing with that narrative isn't actually effective (except in turning even MORE Democrat voters away from the party).

I personally don't think that President Trump is directly or knowingly involved in collusion. I just think that he doesn't know how to be President and that he isn't putting in the effort to learn (i.e. not receiving daily intelligence briefings). This puts him on weak footing when it comes to the Russians.

You will admit, I hope, that the reason for Flyn being fired was because he lied about meetings with the Russians to the VP and others. If there wasn't anything to it other than friendly meetings, why

Point of fact, I still don't know what's so terrible about what the Russians supposedly did..

Attempting to interfere with a US election, according to both the CIA and the FBI. Not only that, what's now being investigated are evidences of collusion with the Trump campaignâ - ostensibly, to hurt HRC.

Takes all the fun out being a DemocratThe difference between a Republican and a Democrat is which way the guns point when they form up a firing squad.Republicans form up a circle and face outward, killing everybody.Democrats form up a circle and face inward, shooting themselves.

In the end, everybody dies. Which is no fun at all.

So, as a Liberal (not necessarily a democrat) what do I stand for?

Equal protection under the law. No one is above it, no one doesn't have the protections it recognizes. This means if

This is the point that causes me the most uncertainty in what I hope for. (Not that my hopes have any causal efficacy, but still).

Trump is possibly the first president in my lifetime who I've felt really viscerally disgusted by, however much I may have disagreed with others' policies. For that reason, it's kind of enjoyable to watch him failing so spectacularly. Until I remember that his failures are our failures as he represents the whole American nation. Then I want something done about it. But the only thing I can really see possibly being done about it is removing him from office, which only puts Pence into the same seat. That replaces the incompetent buffoon pushing all the wrong policies with... a (presumably) more competent professional pushing no better policies. Maybe it makes America more respectable and restores some sense of trust in our political process that Trump may be undermining. But is it a good thing to have someone every bit as despicable when it comes to the actual dry concrete policy content, who merely looks more respectable and is more trusted? Mightn't it be better if the villain were obviously evil than able to pretend to be good? I just don't know.

You're saying Liberals don't want a bright, articulate, politician who happens to disagree with them on a handful of issues, and would rather have someone completely incompetent whose politics are beyond most definitions of extreme?

Assuming Pence doesn't take the fall with Trump, I see no reason to fear him more. We're less likely to get into a Nuclear War. We're more likely to see humane immigration policies. We're less likely to swell the ranks of terrorist groups with people convinced we're at war on

I'd genuinely like to know. What am I missing. I just don't see how this is _not_ obstruction of justice. You can argue that Comey lied, I suppose. But otherwise Trump told Comey to drop an investigation into one of his people. That's pretty much a textbook example of Obstruction of Justice AFAIK. Then again, IANAL so take that with a grain of salt. Bill the Clinton perjured himself and managed 8 years. But what he did was a _lot_ less serious. Lying about a side piece isn't remotely in the same boat as doi